Hot-gas thrusters are used in rockets, missiles, interceptors, and various other vehicles and environments. For example, hot-gas thrusters may be used to control vehicle propulsion, steering, lateral divert, and attitude for missiles, munitions, and various spacecraft. A hot-gas thruster typically receives high-energy gas from, for example, a solid or liquid propellant gas generator. Depending upon the particular end-use system in which the hot-gas thruster is installed, hot-gas flow through the hot-gas thruster is preferably controlled to vary the thrust, pitch, yaw, roll, spin rate, and/or other dynamic characteristics of a vehicle in flight.
Many hot-gas thrusters include one or more controllably actuated valves to control the flow of hot-gas. One preferred method of valve actuation is via a geared electric motor. Unfortunately, this type of actuation can exhibit response and/or energy usage drawbacks when relatively high levels of thrust (e.g., 500 lbf to 1,000 lbf or more) are desired from the hot-gas thruster. In particular, the response time can be relatively slow (e.g., tens of milliseconds) and/or the electric power consumption can be relatively high (e.g., more than 1 kW).
Hence, there is a need for an electric motor actuated hot-gas thruster that exhibits a relatively fast response time and relatively low electric power consumption when delivering relatively high levels of thrust. The present invention addresses at least this need.